Changed
by Unhobbity Hobbit
Summary: Eglantine realises just what has happened to Pippin while he was away.


A/N: This fic was very annoying and refused to be written properly the first time. I thank** Breon Briarwood** for looking it over and giving me a few pointers, I hope it's better now.  
  
Enjoy!  
  
Changed  
  
"Pippin, dear, I don't see you nearly as much as I used to, do you really have to spend your entire time here in the bath?" said Eglantine as she walked into the bathroom. The air was full of moisture and smelt of a variety of soaps. The windows were so steamed up that it was hard to tell the sky from the grass.  
  
"My own mother telling me to stop washing! Whatever next?" said Pippin where he was lounging in the tub.  
  
"Washing? You call that washing? I call that an extended lie-in!" Eglantine stared at her son, but he did nothing. In fact, smiling cheekily, he closed his eyes and rested his head back against the tub. Eglantine sighed, they'd have to have a bigger tub made, Pippin's legs didn't entirely fit in the old ones. Even though he didn't live in the Smials anymore, he visited enough. "Look my lad, if you're not washed and out within the next five minutes, I'll wash you!" she warned. Pippin took notice of that threat, his mother had an affinity for picking the hardest scrubbing brushes.  
  
"Alright! Pass me a towel!" Eglantine did so and decided to wait for Pippin outside; her clothes were becoming quite damp in that saturated air.  
  
No more than a few minutes later Pippin emerged with a puff of steam from the bathroom. He was fully dressed but his hair was still sopping wet.  
  
"O Pippin! You'll get your clothes all wet!" she reached up, further than she used to, and pulled at one of the ringlets that Pippin's hair had become. Eglantine frowned at the water on her hand and then wiped it dry on her dress. "And your hands! Look at how wrinkly they are! How long were you- "Eglantine stopped in her tracks and just stared at Pippin's wrist.  
  
"Mum? Mum what is it?" said Pippin, also looking at his wrist though not seeing anything out of the ordinary. Eglantine turned his hand over and studied the back of his wrist.  
  
"You've been cut here," she said quietly, almost to herself. "Give me your other hand!" she demanded and Pippin held it out for the same intense inspection that the other one was submitted to. "What happened?" she said sharply.  
  
"What happened when?" said Pippin, still not sure what his mother was talking about.  
  
"Your wrists have been injured, both in the same way, what happened?" Pippin took one of his hands back and looked at the wrist carefully. All around it ran a slightly darker band of still-healing skin. Pippin took a moment to marvel at his mother's observational skills.  
  
"That's from when my hands were bound," he said seriously.  
  
"Your hands were bound?" Eglantine looked at her son sharply, "Why and by whom?"  
  
"To keep me from running away and by orcs." Eglantine's eyes flashed at her son's last word and she ground her teeth angrily. She felt like running into an orcs lair and slaying every one. Then she calmed herself a little, saying to herself that she didn't know where any orc lairs were anyway.  
  
"What else did they do?" Pippin didn't even bother considering lying, not when his mother was in this mood. He pulled up the back of his trouser-leg and showed his mother the small white scars on the back of his calves. Eglantine bent down to get a closer look and then looked back up at Pippin questioningly.  
  
"They were from the whips," he said gently. Eglantine gasped, she knew that Merry never told anyone where that scar over his eye had come from but that was Merry, she never dreamed that her own Pippin was hiding things from her.  
  
"What other scars are there? Come on, I want to know where every last one is or I'll strip you down myself!" Pippin looked sadly at his mother, not knowing if she really should know or if it would be too much for her to know. All the same he pushed his braces off his shoulders and untucked his shirt. He took one more look at his mother's face and still saw fury blazing there, so he undid the buttons and shrugged the shirt off his shoulders so it rested at the crook of his elbow. Eglantine frowned and ground her teeth again.  
  
To the untrained eye, aside from one scar on his shoulder, it didn't look like too much was wrong, but to a mother's eye there was plenty to worry over. Slight patches of discoloured skin where a cut must have been and the faint whiteness of scars. Eglantine ran her fingers over the small blemishes.  
  
"Where did all these come from?"  
  
"They're just battle wounds, armour can't protect you from everything."  
  
"All of them?" Pippin thought hard and then smiled.  
  
"No, not all. That one," he said, pointing to a scar on his upper arm. "Was from when I fell off my pony on the way back home and this one," he indicated to a mark on his stomach that wouldn't scar but had yet to heal completely. "That was a particularly boisterous wrestling match with one of the boys in Minas Tirith." Eglantine shook her head, that was still a lot of injuries from battle. There was silence while she looked at each of Pippin's arms.  
  
"Too thin!" She declared suddenly, "You are far too thin, Fatty has overtaken you and he was near half-starved when they pulled him from the lockholes!"  
  
"Fatty has a name to live up to. And I'll have you know that I'm a mite fatter than when I arrived in Minas Tirith, some there would say I've grown soft!" Eglantine looked at her son unbelievingly and poked his stomach. Pippin batted her hand away.  
  
"Yes, as soft as a rock, you are!" Pippin rolled his eyes, but still, if that meant he would be getting tastier dinners, he didn't mind.  
  
A young maid appeared from around the corner and stopped at what she saw. She quickly gathered herself together and hurried past, trying to avert her eyes and stop blushing quite so much. Eglantine smiled a little and quirked an eyebrow at her son,  
  
"Shall we get ourselves into a room?"  
  
"Yes, let's." replied Pippin immediately. They both turned towards an empty bedroom just across the hallway.  
  
"O my Pippin!" Eglantine gasped as she pushed her son in front of her, she could now see his back. There were many lines all going in the same direction, like he had been dragged along the floor or pushed into it or something similar. She traced a few of them with her fingers, "Pippin, what happened?"  
  
"I was squashed beneath a troll, I've told you that before!" Pippin smiled as he turned round, but that smile was soon wiped from his face. His mother was deadly serious.  
  
"I know that Peregrin, but you never even mentioned being injured!" Eglantine walked past her son and sat down on the bed. Pippin paused before keeling in front of Eglantine and taking her hands in his.  
  
"I just assumed you'd be able to guess damage a falling troll could cause." Pippin smiled slightly, hoping to lighten the mood.  
  
Eglantine's eyes fixed upon her son's. She saw there a new wisdom, her son had endured many hardships and had emerged the other side a different hobbit. She took a deep, shuddering breath and bit her lip to keep herself from crying.  
  
"So much has happened to you in just a year, you've seen things I couldn't hope to understand," she put her hand up to Pippin's face and smiled, even as the tears brimmed in her eyes, "You've changed, you're not my little Pippin any more."  
  
Pippin was speechless so he just hugged and held his mother as she cried for his lost innocence. Neither of them were able to say how long they stayed there but Eglantine finally pulled herself together and smiled her familiar smile, the one she used to use when Pippin came running to her with a newt he'd found out in the garden.  
  
"Right, well," she wiped her eyes, "We'd better go get you fattened up before people start mistaking you for a stick!"  
  
"Mum! I am not that thin!" they bickered all the way to the kitchen, where Eglantine started putting to right her son's figure.  
  
It took a while for Eglantine to truly know how much that one year had changed her son and she never completely accepted it. She was, however, always grateful that her son had been brought back to her, no matter what little differences there were. 


End file.
